Putting probabilities to these things just seems so silly. Especially when the claims are not mutually exclusive.
UFOs being what they "appear to be" can mean a lot of things. UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects. The USSR and the Iran would have had multiple, very real, UFO sightings thought their time, due to the US military.
There is a coherent explanation where neither the US military is deceiving anyone (to a large extent), nor UFO sighting being universally hoaxes.
People see flying things in the sky and interpret them as some sort of object which should not be there. Across all cases these happens for one of these reason:
- Characteristic behavior of a flying object is mistakenly interpreted as as uncharacteristic. Likely these are most cases
- The object is unidentified, but actually hostile and coming from another nation. The USSR during the cold war and China now have very significant aerospace capabilities. Hostile spying activities are interpreted as UFOs (which is what they are).
The US military is not deceiving anyone, because they themselves can not adequately distinguish these sightings from one another. Likely they could shed some light on some of these but are reluctant to do so.
Giving all of these a "10^-3 to 10^-4" probability of being actual aliens hatching some intergalactic plot to keep humans down just seems very silly.
I remember in the late 80s a lot of the UFO reports were triangular craft, and then the nighthawk was unveiled to the public, that's when I started to think maybe the are no aliens and we're just seeing advanced military tech
UFOs being what they "appear to be" can mean a lot of things. UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects. The USSR and the Iran would have had multiple, very real, UFO sightings thought their time, due to the US military.
There is a coherent explanation where neither the US military is deceiving anyone (to a large extent), nor UFO sighting being universally hoaxes. People see flying things in the sky and interpret them as some sort of object which should not be there. Across all cases these happens for one of these reason:
- Characteristic behavior of a flying object is mistakenly interpreted as as uncharacteristic. Likely these are most cases
- The object is genuinely novel and unidentified by the observer, but actually not hostile. E.g. you are seeing this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk
- The object is unidentified, but actually hostile and coming from another nation. The USSR during the cold war and China now have very significant aerospace capabilities. Hostile spying activities are interpreted as UFOs (which is what they are).
The US military is not deceiving anyone, because they themselves can not adequately distinguish these sightings from one another. Likely they could shed some light on some of these but are reluctant to do so.
Giving all of these a "10^-3 to 10^-4" probability of being actual aliens hatching some intergalactic plot to keep humans down just seems very silly.